At the end of my teenagerhood, I was used to being the center of attention and being popular. I was a model son, a model student, a model social king, a model speaker; a model in religion; as viewed by others: a perfect person. I was the pride of my parents and the focal point for everybody else creating jealousy and envy.
However, around 6 years ago, my life started to change a bit. I was no longer an example for everybody to see. In this past time, I moved out, I’ve took part in vices, tried things I was forbidden to do, developed a mental condition, renounced my religion, and finally got the chance to express myself.
I was expecting for my family to distance themselves away from me as I was no longer the perfect son. Nevertheless, I found out that extended family members and family friends were sifting through my reddit account, my Instagram, my Facebook and so on and was way more popular than I have ever been. What was unraveled was a completely different somebody, one who has changed: no longer the perfect Ahmed. The attention came back as rumour mills and quite some drama, which people love so much.
it makes me feel strange that the most frequent visitors to my website are family members overseas, employers and recruiters. That’s not exactly the kind of people I want to read my stuff but then again, this blog is an opening to the deepest parts of me and it’s enticing.
Online, it’s a completely different story. I’m absolutely unimportant. No one cares about me, I’m just someone hiding behind a website and a blog that appears to most people, a babble of nonsense. We are dreaming of popularity but maybe it’s not the best thing.
I desperately throw my content on all the social media accounts that I have only to drive little traffic. Whatever projects I’ve done are just becoming passion projects for me, not something that others care about.
My blog doesn’t have a direction, it’s just my mind going crazy and throwing up inspiration that randomly comes to me. My blog is me and nothing more. I’m one of the billions of people on Earth and the several millions who have a website. I’m starting to realize that I’m nothing special, why would anyone care about what I have to say?
In the real word, I might be generating a lot of buzz because of certain life choices that I made or exposing conditions that I have. However, online it’s a completely different story: I’m nothing. Just a dot.
I’m sure many bloggers and website authors can relate to me. There’s a pressure for popularity but it’s in vain. No one cares that Ahmed El-Hajjar wrote about his change in career or why he was angry that day.
To my many friends who blog, vlog, stream and so on, I feel your pain. You want to express your freedom but there’s no one to express it to. If someone else has posted the exact same content as you, their stuff might have become unstoppable and viral because of connections they have to a certain industry or perhaps survivorship bias.
I have almost 40 blog posts that is aimed at a large audience but in reality, I’m just talking to myself. This has been more than 3 years of shouting on my side and silence on the other side of the door.
It might sound that I’m frustrated and I’m angry though the dryness of my text doesn’t help but I do feel anxious. What I wrote are subjects that people don’t care about. I started looking at every post, every sale, every view as a passion project.
Inside me, I feel this innate pressure to become big like the others but that doesn’t seem to be my fate. At the end of the day, this is for me only and there’s a select few who have joined me to see what a random stranger on the Internet thinks.
I’ll soldier on and keep at it keeping my expectations at the bottom. It’s just me.